First let me say that I am a linux Newb and have only used it to manage physical devices such as ESX servers and SAN's, have no experience with OS's

I posted here instead of newb forum because it seems to have to do with the fact that i tried to virtualize it.

I have an old Desktop that was acting as a webserver, running Centos 4.4, kernel 2.6.9-42.10.

I was able to import it using the Vmware Boot cd, had to chnage a few options in the virtual Hardware in order for it to work (LSI parallel Bus logic) now it boots but hangs after Loading HAL Daemon. Now I did a interactive startup and the HAL starts fine its the service after that jams up the system "Starting Local Service"

I already checked the rc.local file and all it has in it is "touch /var/lock/subsys/local" which I # out just in case. The boot Log has nothing in it after Starting HAL daemon. The initd seems fine to mu limited knowledge.

Here's the funny part, the server seems to be running fine even though the main console is hung up, I can ssh to it and the webservices are running. if I ctrl+F1 in a 10 secs window after the HAl daemom starts I can get to a new console session and the server never crashes. but if I wait longer that that the main console session hangs and I cannot do anything(yet the server seems to be runngin fine)

Anyone got any ideas? Also tried not loading the Vmware tools and still same issues.

I have similar case before. For my case, when system reach to radiusd start. It will freeze. I boot up with rescue cd and init script start section to put it as background start.
You may want to analyze the which stage cause freeze. If you are quite sure, HAL stage, you can try to disable at that runlevel for troubleshooting purpose.
It should not harm your system since it is optional daemon

The HAL Daemon starts fine, its the next service that crashes it. "Starting Local Service" <-- which I'm not even sure what it does

Try to check
/etc/rc.d/rc.local

This is the area, linux admin will put their custom startup scripts. May be one of them give you headache

As I put in original thread tried that

Thanks for the help though, any more ideas? what's that service responsible for?

Oh my apologies.
In case, you can check if your runlevel is 3
check runlevel
runlevel

if runlevel is 3, if not replace 3 with your runlevel
ls -l /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/ |more

for example
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 Sep 22 2010 S26haldaemon -> ../init.d/haldaemon
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Sep 1 2010 S26lm_sensors -> ../init.d/lm_sensors
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Sep 15 14:18 S26lvm2-monitor -> ../init.d/lvm2-monitor
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Jul 27 2010 S55sshd -> ../init.d/sshd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Sep 22 2010 S56cups -> ../init.d/cups

For my example, I will take a look lm_sensors script

Ok you lost me there

I did check my run level my using "runlevel" command and it comes back as "N 5"

It means you boot up with runlevel 5

ls -l /etc/rc5.d/ |grep S |more

Found the problem!

Had to recompile the Vmware tools, twice to be exact?? First time spit out some errors.. Second time ran fine

Then it boots up just fine...

HOW IN THE WORLD am I supposed to figure that out on my own? got lucky by thinking of doing it is all......